Playing With Science

Everyone who knows us knows that we are huge science geeks, and there's nothing better for us in terms of a family outing than a place that will let us play with ideas. Unfortunately, except for special exhibits, most science museums are pretty interchangeable. We are also kind of spoiled by the fact that we had a membership for years at the Denver Museum of Science and Nature and could go whenever we wanted. Now we're fairly snobby when it comes to our science museum standards. That doesn't mean we don't go to science museums wherever we find them. After all, Lady Chatterly was barely a gleam in her father's eye when we lived in Denver and she needs to get her time to explore too. What it means instead is that we try to go to science museums as cheaply as possible. So, when the Homeschool Day at the Baltimore Museum rolled around and we discovered that all 4 of us could attend for less than the cost of one regular cost ticket, we dropped everything and skedaddled to Baltimore for the day. 

Baltimore's inner harbor

Hot and grumpy

View from the museum window

We started off our visit in Newton's Alley where we made whirlwinds, experimented with projectiles/force/distance, made whirlwinds with centrifugal force, played with pulleys, and made music with random motion.

Motion and music

Lady Chatterly, who has never been a dino girl, liked the dinosaur exhibit best of all. I certainly wasn't complaining. We had just covered geological time in science, and it was great to have interactive materials to underscore what she had learned.

Dinosaur nest

Paleontology puzzle

You would think that if you touched warm and cold metal rods at the same time they would feel warm. Instead, your body becomes confused and all of the bars feel hot.

The best part of the upstairs exhibit was the body facts area. Lady Chatterly learned about bacteria, viruses, our senses, nutrition and more.

Laying on a bed of nails

Optical illusion